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Saturday, October 27, 2012

Foreign Words for Lake


In looking at maps or in an atlas, there is almost always a different term for the English word 'lake' in practically every country. I will list, in alphabetical order, some of the terms for the English word 'lake' found throughout the world; there are undoubtedly many more.
In the Arabic language, there are at least two words for lake: birkat and buhayrat. A dry lake in Arabic is known as sebjet.
In the Tibetan language, co is the short-and-sweet word for lake, daryācheh is the Persian word, göl is the Turkish word, and hāyk' is the Amharic (of Ethiopia) word.
Järvi
is the Finnish word, jezero is the word in Czech and Slovak languages (udolní is the word for 'reservoir' in Czech), jezioro is the Polish word, and khuan is the Thai word.
Lac(s) is used in the French language, lago(s) is used in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages (lagoa is also found in Portuguese), loch/lough is used in the Gaelic language (of Scotland), meer is used in the Afrikaans, Dutch, and German languages, and ozero is the Russian word.
Sāgar is the Hindi word, see is another German word for lake (while strausee is the word for 'reservoir'), sjö/sjön is the Swedish word, and  is the Danish word.
is the Maygar word for lake, vatn is the Norwegian word, and vodoskhovyshche is the extremely long Ukrainian word.
Last but not least, yam is the Hebrew word for lake and sea, and zee is another Dutch word for lake and sea. If you simply find several lakes in a country on a map (or preferably in real life, of course!), you can soon find out what the word for 'lake' is in that country's main language!
>>> Know of any others? Please post a comment below; I would greatly appreciate it!

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